Curiosity Nabbed the Spider
by Talia Ali
Summary: Driven by worry for Peter, MJ inspects Spider-Man's webshooters, with mildly humorous results. Complete.
1. MJ

Disclaimer: Don't own it. Whose idea was it to put these things on top of fan fic, anyway? I know a lot of authors who would want that person gagged and beaten with a rusty rake. ~grin~ I, however, find it a challenge. Sometimes.

Now, keep in mind that I really have no idea how Spider Man's webshooters really work. The mechanical ones from the comic, I mean. I know there's a button, but that's the extent of my knowledge. If I have something _radically_ wrong, please feel free to correct me.

# Curiosity Nabbed the Spider

## By Talia MT Ali

Mary Jane couldn't help it; her curiosity was killing her. Peter had already left, a full day of web-slinging/photography ahead of him. He had looked tired on his way out the window, but he always did these days. One super-villain after another reared their ugly heads, and Spider-Man was needed to shut them down. Mary Jane knew it, accepted it, but didn't like it one bit. Darn it if she could ever stop worrying about him.

MJ scarcely got any more sleep than Peter did, waiting up for him, and sometimes even being involved in his battles. That happened less as Spidey learned the ABC's to keeping the huge secret all New York was dying to know: Who Was Spider-Man?

It was just an ordinary Monday, but today was the day she happened to wonder how safe he really was out there. Besides the ordinary criminals (although coming to a robbery without some kind of costume was practically passé) and the idiots running around in masks, she worried about his equipment. Sure, the only real thing that could fail would be his web-shooters, but she worried. What if they both broke down while he was in the middle of a street? MJ couldn't even imagine what he would feel, having his ever-loyal web-shooters suddenly poop out. He would be a very flat red-and-blue Spidey pancake. The thought both amused her and brought frantic tears to her eyes.

In that state, she stumbled up the stairs and burst into Peter's room. She made a beeline for the closet, which had a false back. With all the reverence due it, she drew out the cardboard box containing his supplies.

Rising quickly, she drew the curtain and locked the door. It wouldn't do for someone to see her going through Spider-Man's things--in Peter's room. She could only imagine the scene that would cause.

Flipping her hair back over her shoulder, she sank again to her knees and removed the top of the box. On the very top were extra costumes of varying thicknesses. For different weather, she realized. New York was cold in the winter and spandex was just *not* going to cut it there--as cute as he did look in it. Setting those aside carefully, she next drew out her quarry: a shoebox full of spare web-shooters. Beside that was Peter's stock of web-fluid, a small jar of miniscule capsules. His fast-setting, unstable polymer that served for his web.

Mary Jane knew for a fact that Peter had two shooters he used consistently. Those were kept on him at all times, or in a secret pouch in his photography bag. She had watched him carefully clean those shooters, fix them, tune them and generally be as paranoid with them as a racecar driver was about his car. She had to know, though, what could go wrong.

The ones in the box were his spares, ones he kept around in case one of his regulars was crushed or flattened onto his arm. Most were older models of his current design, but still worked fine.

Mary Jane withdrew the shiniest slinger and deftly attached it to her arm with the Velcro. It took a bit of adjusting, as her arm was skinnier than Peter's, but she got it fitted comfortably. It seemed sturdy enough as she fiddled with it. It certainly wasn't going to blow away like so many spare parts.

Finally, it was in the proper position, lever in her palm. There were a few dangling wires that she didn't know what to do with, but she ignored them. Pressing the button a few times with the tips of her fingers, MJ saw that it opened a hole at the uppermost part of the slinger, enough to let a skinny stream of polymer through.

Thus far, the mechanism was unloaded. Picking one of the capsules up with her fingertips, she examined it. Some kind of alloy, to keep the chemical inside at high pressure yet allow for easy puncturing. It was a dusky bronze, scratched and faded.

The web-shooter was compact enough against her wrist for the location of the cartridge to be plain. However, inserting it was a different matter. It didn't help that she used her left hand, either. Finally she figured it out by flipping a shutter and sliding it in like a battery. It clicked in synthesized pleasure and the small door covering it popped closed.

Abruptly in her mind's eye the device began to radiate power and wholeness. This was it, what the web-shooter was designed for. This device had single-fingeredly held off crook and super-villain alike. It had been the facilitator for Spider-Man's most highly visible form of movement. The web-slinger had been created for the heights and came alive with the promise of action, much as Peter himself did.

Triumphantly, MJ pointed her wrist at the wall and jammed the button down. She felt the gears turn in the shooter, and braced herself for the flow. The woman knew what it looked like, knew how it felt, had seen Spider-Man press this button time after time...

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She froze for an instant. Pressing it again yielded no better results. Nothing came out, there were no sounds coming from the shooter other than the clank of well-oiled gears, and the lever demonstrated resistance to her push. Peter kept all his equipment in top shape, even the old shooters, so that he would never be surprised. It was easier to maintain them, he told her once, than to try to oil and clean them on his way out the door to cuckoo Doc Ock's clock.

That bell has long since rung, MJ corrected herself. Cuckoo as the brilliant scientist may be, his strength was formidable. Combined with the relentless untiring persistence of his metallic arms, he and Spider-Man often had to destroy city property three or four times before her husband came up with some new way to trap the bad Doctor. More often than not, MJ was left to tend a husband with multiple dislocations, bruises, cuts and occasionally broken bones, and Peter was left with two or three sets of costumes and web-shooters to resuscitate.

She turned her attention back to the recalcitrant shooter. It had to be in good working condition. There was something she wasn't doing right. The projecting wires danced in front of her nose, taunting. There had to be somewhere to stick those.

As she glanced over at his pile of spare costumes, she had a moment of brilliance. Spidey never just squeezed the lever. He had a funny way of doing it, with fingers extended and wrist outturned. She'd always assumed it was just habit or his method of aiming. She hadn't thought about it actually being necessary for the shooter to _work_...

Concentrating hard, she pictured Peter's gloved hand firing the web. Yes... as far as she remembered (she was usually screaming in terror whenever he had to save her. That kind of thing tends to distract you) he directed his pinky and index finger outward, pressing the button with only two of his fingers. She made an approximation of his gesture and tried again. There was a bit of a hiss, but still nothing came at the wall.

Those wires, Mary Jane thought, probably detect the movement of the fingers. With the bit of science left to her after high school, she trialed and errored her way to success.

When the web-fluid did come out, it was such a shock that she merely stared at the webbed over photo of her parents for a few minutes. The stuff was obviously quite sticky. She wouldn't be able to clean it up until the webbing disintegrated after an hour.

"Wow," MJ breathed, examining the conglomeration of wires. Turning her wrist, another glob went wide and attached itself to the door, effectively boxing her in. She groaned.

Considerable experimentation showed her to create different thicknesses of web, different textures and tackinesses, and taught her how to aim a little better. Missing her targets constantly was a problem though. She had to make frantic snatches for two vases and the precariously perched television in the corner. She started to enjoy herself, and only kept time by seeing which webs were dissolving within the allotted hour.

Next Chapter: Peter's adventures on the way home!

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	2. Peter

Author's Note: He he he… I'm so devoted to my fanfiction that I'm posting this NOW. I'm going to walk the stage for my High School Graduation in 45 minutes. I just came home from the Graduation Mass! Hope you enjoy this chapter, and think of me getting my diploma while you read!

When his spider-sense a-okayed it, he tumbled acrobatically into the bedroom MJ and he shared. He sneezed before he even pushed aside the curtains and dropped to one knee on the carpet.

"Whoa," he breathed. The world was a weaving of off-white strands. It swathed the room as closely as a blanket, and by the thin layer of dust on the floor it had been there a while. The material was familiar. He suddenly recognized it as his home-made webbing. Even he, as its creator, had never seen so much of it in one room before. He'd made nets and hang-gliders, roped up countless thieves, used it as a means of travel every single day, and even he had never realized it could be like... _this_...

It was all encompassing, filling almost the entire room. His spare capsules must have exploded somehow. Hopefully MJ had not been in here when it had happened. Most of it was the fine spray he used for netting, luckily. She would be able to breathe even if she was caught under this mess.

The top foot and a half of the room was mostly clear for some reason, except for a messily stuck strand here and there. With ease born of long practice, he vaulted to the ceiling and spider-crawled towards the door. He would go downstairs and see if MJ was there. If not, he'd have to grab a sharp knife and come back up to find her.

A splash of crimson caught his eye. He nearly lost his grip on the ceiling as he recognized the back of Mary Jane's beautiful head, near buried in the substance that surrounded her. He started towards her, to call out and determine if she was all right, when she did something remarkable.

She laughed.

He froze in his tracks, one of his feet slipping to gravity. She was _laughing_. As he watched, she raised her right hand, which was equipped with a strange-looking glove, and a tendril of the same fluid-solid that surrounded her affixed itself to the ceiling. Twice, _thwap thwap_, and then a thin _krrschh_ as she lightened the spray to a fine mist. It was filler for between the strong lengths of webbing. With a confident hand, she adjusted the web before it set to form a hollow.

She was making a swing.

He frowned. If she sat in it now, the bottom would either stretch beyond use or fall out, depending on the temperament of the webbing. The fine mesh just wasn't thick enough to support a grown person's weight.

He crept up above her and watched her come to the same conclusion, testing the strength and balance with her hand and a very dusty pillow. Her lips pursed in concentration as she strengthened the seat with shots of web-fluid, Spider-Man knew he could watch her all night. He _could_, but he got something even better sometimes, him being her husband and all. With a quick, almost lazy movement, he attached his web to the ceiling and played it out, so he lowered headfirst towards the web-strewn carpet. There was no room for standing anyway, other than where his wife seated herself on the dusty carpet. He cocked his head at her back.

"I thought we were clear that one freak per family is plenty enough," he said dryly. She laughed and turned to see him. Smiling, she raised her arm with the affixed shooter and pointed it at her husband. Under the mask, his eyebrows went up, and he tried to scuttle back up his webbing.

Too late. His world became a fuzz of webbing and the front of his mask felt stiff and heavy. He heard her crack up as he tumbled back up the strand to crouch on the ceiling by pure instinct. He could still breathe, thanks to the small gap his nose left in the material. Peeling the hardening mask from his face, Peter flung it across the room like a Frisbee.

"Like spider, like wife," Mary Jane pointed out, still trying to muffle giggles.

"Ha ha."

She tilted her head back so she could consider the man crouched on the ceiling. He looked right back at her.

"I wager I'm a quicker draw on the shooter," Peter grinned, "Shoot me now and we're both lying on the floor for an hour."

"I could think of worse things, Tiger," MJ purred. Peter blushed despite himself.

"So, uh, what prompted this?" he gestured about the room with a gloved hand.

"Near-feline curiosity and wifely worries." The red-head twinkled with mischief. "Once I got the thing working, it was fun."

Peter dropped his eyes to the web-shooter she wore. Oh... she boasted one of the very first models he'd made, all wires and doodads and thingamits. After he got some use out of the first model, he found that the slightest punch would usually break _something_, leaving him with an inoperative shooter and usually one or more angry supervillians on his tail. This one had been an effort to make the shooter more compact and less centralized. In those respects it had worked, but a few days in the field showed him it was better without the strings. They didn't like to be concealed under clothing, they were constantly tangling, and fighting with then trying to make a 'phone booth' alter-ego switch just didn't compute. They were sort of his webshooter's missing link--he used the techniques he developed working on this shooter to create all of the others, including the ones he wore now. The quick double-tap on the stud in his palm replaced the need for the wires that snaked around Mary Jane's hands.

"We'll discuss fun when all this webbing dissolves," said Peter, who was grinning despite himself. She was lovely in her enthusiasm. "The vacuum is going to choke and die."

"Live in the moment, Tiger." MJ blew him a kiss. "Come share my swing."

He again played out his webbing so at least they were eye-level. She smiled in clear invitation. With that smile on her lips, he felt like the large cat she called him. Peter kissed her soundly. It had been a while since they had kissed at opposite angles, but it was a skill not easily forgotten. Like riding a bike, only much, much more pleasurable--bikes tended to throw him off faster than a bronco could, usually with concussive results.

As she smiled into his chin, he remarked, "Your swing needs better support."

"Really? I hadn't noticed!" MJ bit his nose lightly in punishment. "Perhaps you should help me?"

"Certainly, my lady." Peter smiled. "See, rather than attaching strings to each other, you make the whole thing at once. Observe."

Letting go of the webbing with his hands and only clinging with his feet, he pointed both shooters at the ceiling and spun his swing. Varying the grade as he worked, he attached it to the ceiling with his ordinary webbing and used medium weave for the seat, crossing over and finishing the seat with a reinforcing glob on the bottom.

"Voila!" he demonstrated the swing to his bemused-looking wife. "Like cream pie in the face of a mime. Easy to do and appreciate."

"Show-off," she complained, "Doing it upside down. You trying to show me up?"

"Don't be angry. You're better at different things."

"Oh yeah? Like what?"

"Being gorgeous, intelligent, loving and considerate."

"Is that all?"

Peter considered, cocking his head. "Oh, oh, I know! You're also real good at worrying too much!"

"That is your fault, mister," she pointed an accusatory finger at him.

"I know what else you're good at," Peter continued.

"Really? What?"

"I could show you."

"Go for it."

"You're on."

(Calidor's Note: Yup, that's lucky. Yup...)

(Author's Note: ~wide grin~)


End file.
